/m/contracts

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

Well, sure... tennis isn't a contact sport, but you have to run around a lot, so it'd be easy to incur a leg injury... you could obviously get killed hunting... and a notable player was killed boating in relatively recent memory. (I wonder if the boating one was in there prior to that. You know how safety stuff usually works; someone gets hurt and then they make the rule against it.)

This headline, though, seems tremendously dramatic. Does the author seriously think that dozens of players every offseason are going to be released without pay on the stated basis that they lifted weights? It sounds like the author has never seen a document written by a lawyer before.

If anything, the A-Rod case seems more of a potential step towards "NFL contracts" than proscriptions on offseason activities. But since they didn't ultimately seriously try to get the contract annulled, I wouldn't unduly worry about that either.

Anyway, I think I'd rather see most baseball players twerking than Miley Cyrus.

I still think Shirling got screwed in the Olympics. Who watches wrestling anyways?

[T]he union refuses to trust in whatever the best intentions of teams may be.

And this is how things should be, unless you're Germany and the union also sits on the corporate board. I'd prefer the German system, but I know that's just not going to happen, so cautious partnership is the best I can really hope for between labor and capital.

It's hard to do an apples to apples comparison simply due to roster sizes (53+practice squad vs. 25) but I think it's really hard to argue that turning baseball into football would, overall, help players. It would certainly help out some of the top draft picks, and younger players, but guaranteed contracts are a pretty big ####### deal. And there's a reason why football owners were able to push around the players during the lockout, and that reason is that the players union is, and always has been, incredibly weak. Compare that to the MLBPA, which for whatever faults it has has done a very good job for it's members.